 Aloha and welcome to Hawaii Reimagined on Think Tech Hawaii. We're living in a world of uncertainty and facing massive disruptions to our labor markets due to automation and now COVID. In Hawaii Reimagined, I will be featuring innovators and entrepreneurs, both locally and globally, who are creating innovative solutions to make a positive impact in our communities. And we'll be learning what these innovators are doing so we can have inspired conversations about what Hawaii's economy and the future of work might look like as we emerge from the effects of these disruptions. I'm Ruby Men and your host. And as we're trying to navigate our way in the world of work, I help people navigate their career transitions in my career, get it done mastermind community. And you can learn more at brainsmartdesign.com. So I'm super excited to introduce my guest today who is Alec Wagner. He's a director of the Purple Prize that started in 2016. And the Purple Prize is an innovative competition that brings together people across sectors to build technology solutions that create value for land and people. And to date, they've worked with over 40 teams and have awarded those with the highest potential to create real impact in Hawaii. So we're going to be talking about their unique approach of integrating technology with Hawaiian values and cultural practices, and what interesting projects they're doing with workforce innovation, and also any COVID pivots that they may have had to make. And just as an aside, I had the incredible blessing of being able to participate in the Purple Prize with the Social Lender Prize inmate art project that I was working on in 2019. And I can only tell you that it was a game changer for me. I learned so much not only about business, but Hawaiian practices and cultural values. And so I am just so excited to have Alec be here on this program and welcome Alec. I'm just thrilled that you're here and to tell us and so I want to hear so much more about some of the cool things that you've been doing in the Purple Prize. I want to find out more about you and your story and the story of the Purple Maya as well. So let's dive right in. Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you even got to the Purple Prize? Well, thanks so much for having me Ruby. You know, you talking about the CARE projects and your participation in the Purple Prize in 2019 brings back some awesome memories. So it makes me feel a little bit reminiscent and, you know, I'd say too for your viewers that it was such a pleasure working with you. Actually as a co-facilitator in our Kamaki Nana Design Thinking Program and I had a chance to, I think, learn a lot from you about human behavior and the way that teams interact and really how we can make the program an effective collaborative experience. So I just want to echo your kind words back and share my appreciation for you. Of course. Anyways though, my career path and I guess how I got to my role. I guess it started in college as most of our careers do and I think that overall, I've had the privilege of being able to work in spaces that I'm passionate and interested in. In college I studied political science which I guess is unconventional for a person that works in the space that I work in now. But I was really interested in college about I think the intersection of power dynamics and economic development. And especially in so far as the way that that played out for big economic leaders like the United States and peripheral countries. The ones that were maybe dependent on the United States or vice versa that the United States was dependent on. And so that I guess international lens led me to some work in research on international economic affairs and a little bit of interning free interning it's not easy to find a paid job in that space without a master's degree or a PhD. And so I did some interning for sure and the immigration space and ended up landing I think I'm a really valuable opportunity that kick started my interest in the impact investment space is where I work next through an organization called the trilateral Commission, I became a big rock fellow fellow there and had an opportunity to study the role that governments played in investment for technological innovation and for artificial intelligence, especially in the Asia Pacific region. And so I worked on with a number of other really impressive people who far, if it would deliver far more value in that report than I did, I got a chance to learn a little bit about how countries were thinking about the future of work and, and how they were investing in the future of work and their innovative economies. And I also got a chance to peek into the impact investment space and that's what got me super inspired around these kind of fringe or not fringe but different kinds of investment that were being done in social and environmental impact projects, especially those that were driven by technology and so I was in the Bay Area I was based in Palo Alto at the time so I ended up landing a internship and ended up working as an impact investment analyst at an impact investment firm in Palo Alto called One World Training and Investments. We invested in early stage companies that were delivering a social environmental impact globally and consulted with companies on their corporate social responsibility strategies and things like that. And that is what put me in this space of working with entrepreneurs and being fascinated with entrepreneurship and innovation and being from Maui originally I wanted to move back home had the opportunity to do that a little bit earlier than I thought with the county of Maui as a legislative analyst in the county council and then from there I got picked up by the Purple Might Foundation which is where I work now and I was brought on to help turn an already kicking already incredible program called the Purple Prize which at the time was just an incentive challenge prize for for Indigenous innovators and I was I was tasked with growing that into a full-blown incubator program where we would work with local founders for values driven mostly Indigenous Native Hawaiian. We would help them to create technology companies that were not only rooted in the values of this place but created social and environmental impacts in this place. So that's I guess you know what I'm doing now and then how I got there. So one of the things that I found so fascinating about your well I guess we can consider it as an accelerator for startups specifically for tech startups and your approach is so different because you incorporate Hawaiian practices, Hawaiian values and you consider a lot of the Indigenous practices as a technology and there's a term that you use called Indigenous innovation. I really want to dive into that concept because I see that as being the heart of the Purple Prize and what makes it so different from all the other accelerators that are out there. So can we talk a little bit about that? Like what does that term mean and why is it important and how does that factor into the entire Purple Prize ecosystem? Yeah that's a really good and deep question. We've been trying to figure out the answer to that question for a pretty long time and people, cultural practitioners and incredible academics have been thinking about why Indigenous innovation as well as practitioners in other communities like Aotearoa or in other Indigenous communities and First Nations peoples in Canada have been really thinking about what innovation looks like when it's done from an Indigenous place or Indigenous context. And in Hawaii that even looks different and so we as an organization and as an initiative of the Purple Prize have been trying to figure out what this thing means and so we've been running just these incubator programs with these challenge prizes as experiments I think. In 2016 when the program started that was an experiment to see if there was even anyone in the ecosystem in Hawaii that was working on something innovative that was driven and founded in Indigenous values and ancestral technologies. In 2017 it was just a proof of that original inkling that we got from the 2016 Purple Prize and in 2019 we had enough conviction to really think about how do we prove out the business case for this technology ideology that actually exists. And so that's what this has all been. It's just been a repetition of experiments and really honing in on what this Indigenous innovation concept actually means. But where we're at right now is that Indigenous innovation is the creation of a new thing that is inspired by and rooted in the culture and values of the place that you're in. And so whether that place is in Hawaii or that place is in New Zealand or that place is in Canada it's about what is Indigenous in that place in that community. And generally Indigenous innovation is something that's done by Indigenous people. But we believe and we've been learning about this and so we're not you know we're not prescriptive about any of our definitions or any of our ideologies and a lot of these things are from my own experience as a non-Indigenous person so I acknowledge that. But we believe that people who are non-Indigenous can also innovate with an Indigenous mindset or from an Indigenous context as long as they assume authentically the position of an ally with an Indigenous community and establish a really deep authentic connection in that community. And the really important thing that I think is missed a lot of times by people who consider themselves allies from Indigenous community or to a BIPOC community is that reciprocity needs to be created with that community. And that reciprocity can look a lot of different ways. It can be monetary, it can be non-monetary and it can be other forms of capital, human capital, social capital. It could be your intellectual capital that you donate to an organization or just any kind of excellence that is given to that community is our forms of reciprocity. And I think as long as those things exist in a person who is non-Indigenous and is innovating with Indigenous in this ways in that place, I think it's possible. But we tend to just for safety or really just for surety. We call that place-based innovation. And so we kind of operate with both and we try to cultivate both. And I think that is definitely where we're headed in more of an inclusive market-driven direction with the Purple Prize. Yeah, actually I wanted to see if we could show picture number four because a big part of the experience, at least when I was in the Purple Prize, was being able to go into these incredible environments that I probably wouldn't have had access to any other way and have a foot in the door and just be able to go out there on the land and experience it and have the practitioners talk to us about what their practices are. And I think the part where the technology comes in and actually to have a different definition about technology, which I think is so important, is that I think normally our mental model about technology is that it's driven by a computer, right, that you have a human-computer interaction. But really when you're talking about Indigenous technology, it's talking about ecosystems that the Hawaiian practices have done just even in land management. And those are some of the wonderful things that we learned in our experience. I wanted to talk a little bit also about some of the things that the students do as part of the experience. And if we can show some of those photos, we did a lot of team building, classroom. If you can show, yeah, so this is one of the... If I can add to what you're sharing too. I mean, the reason that we were able or we're able to bring people into these communities is because of the relationships that we have with people who are leaders in those communities. And so we have a majority Indigenous board, our organization was founded by two Indigenous men. And we've developed relationships with the community that allow us to help other people to have access to those kinds of opportunities. And that picture that you showed in Waianae over at Kala Farms, we have to think. Our board member, Kamu Enos, who's also the director of Indigenous Innovation, the first office of Indigenous Innovation in the world. In a post-secondary education system and his father, Eric, you know, are really the reasons why we're able to provide access to this kind of knowledge and these kind of opportunities. I mean, because those people are the people that carry the knowledge. We're just connectors and facilitators of those networking opportunities, I guess, in some ways. But technology is something that can be laid on top of those existing practices where there's existing and special technologies like the aqua system or like, modern technologies can be laid on top of those and used to achieve astounding technological results and innovative results. And so that's kind of that's what really we're really interested in is we're interested in seeing how can we take an old technology, more how do we take an old value system or practice and how we bring that into contemporary spaces and have the right kind of people lead and speak about those technologies in a way that is catalytic to cultural resurgence. Yeah, and I think that was that was the part that was so inspiring to me. I love systems thinking and when we went out into the land, I just started to see this is, you know, well, first of all, the first question I asked myself is who how did these native Hawaiians 700 years ago even come up with this. I mean, they didn't have GPS. They didn't have all the technology that we have. And yet they were able to figure out a land management system that is complete. It's the most well designed system that I think I've, I know of. And, you know, from managing what happens with the water at the mountain all the way down to the fish pond was just a marvel to me. And I kept on thinking, were they sitting around a fire some point and just coming up with this incredible system. I mean, how did that even happen. And I don't know if you guys have any insight into that but that's the first question that came to me is like who dreamt this up, you know, because it's it's really quite remarkable that that entire system so I would. Yeah, I'm super interested in how you're starting to see the evolution as you're working through the teams and you've had now some experience, are you starting to see the adoption of this model the systems thinking model, as it applies to Hawaiian practices. Are you starting to see some of that integrate into some of the teams and the problems that they're solving and the solutions are coming up with. Definitely. Well, all the teams that go through the purple prize that we try to embed those things into the way the design their company is the way to design the products, the way they form their teams would they bring into leadership positions on those teams. Those are all things that we consider as we go through, you know, what was an eight month process and now is a six month process. And so teams are definitely picking those things up. I mean you could learn about all those without me going into too much depth on our website which is purple prize.com. But a couple maybe a couple that I would highlight are one called exchange Avenue, which is a company that has created a product that is essentially a. It's the system and the economy that exists around the system, placed into a FinTech no code app. And so this, that's an incredible innovation, super, super creative, definitely was rooted in the relationships in the cultural practices and the knowledge that he was able to get passed down from from cultural practitioners and Kupuna that he talked about interacted interact with john john Garcia. And, you know, there's other examples I don't want to take up too much time on those because I know there's other questions you want to get to but definitely would encourage anybody who's interested in examples of this indigenous innovation to check up the website. Yeah. The other thing also I know is that you have been coming up with some interesting workforce innovation projects. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that. And did I read. I think I saw on your Instagram posts that you folks just got awarded a fairly large federal grant for workforce development so I'd like to hear a little bit more about that too. But, yeah, you want to talk about that like what. Happy to really shortly now I am. I don't run those programs. I helped a little bit in the ideation but we have to really experience now three really experienced people who are running this program called the Yoppa program, they've really taken it from idea and implementation and they were the people, along with one of our other co founders Kelsey Amos who were able to raise a relatively significant grants that we put together in some ways in response to the coronavirus we need to figure out how do we bring people from different backgrounds that do not have technical technological experience into positions that are relatively economically lucrative and our branches off into more long term careers in the space. So the program focus on Salesforce trains people and believe it's 14 weeks to become Salesforce administrators and helps them to get certain certified and places them in Salesforce administrator jobs and local companies where there's a significant need. That's one of the way that's the workforce development program that we're working on, but of course purple prize and incubation of technology companies that we do there is maybe also workforce development stuff a longer tail and requires people to do a little bit more work and break out of their comfort zone. In a way that requires people to do things that have never been done before. So that I guess is the distinction between the two different workforce development initiatives that we have. So let's that I think that's a great segue for workforce innovation. Also, in terms of, you know, I think that you're working with a lot of different startups companies, and I was wondering if you've observed anything shifting as a result of COVID in terms of how companies are thinking about the future of work or, and especially of how it relates to Hawaii I mean we've been in a service economy for so many years, and we've been talking about trying to diversify for so many years and it almost looks like COVID has now accelerated that 100 X and just wondering if you're if you know if you've got your ear to the ground if you're hearing anything of how things might be shifting or what you're starting to see in that landscape. That's a, that's a really interesting question. And, you know, I don't know if this is necessarily just because of COVID, but I'll provide kind of my observations. Generally about locally, how workforce, or how the future of work is being dealt with, in my point of view, and, and maybe not globally but maybe just a little bit less specifically. You know, I think that generally locally there's been a lot of efforts that have gone into digitization and into the improvements of work processes with technology. There's been awesome initiatives that have come out of white technology development corporation under age under under d bed, which have been awesome the true initiative, you know is one of them, and some other things that come out of that organization, have been really a corporations local corporations adopting new technologies and getting into the future of work but I think more broadly, there's also been exciting improvements. I think generally there's been more attention given to diversity equity and inclusion, which is an important social aspect of the future of work that we don't really talk about. There has been more companies that are playing more active roles in community engagement and more active roles in corporate social responsibility. There have been companies that are paying more attention to their carbon footprints. And so I think these are all things that relate to the future of work is their conditions that allow people to continue to work, allow companies to continue to thrive. One example of that that I'd say that really actually pertains to us and pertains to the indigenous context that we work in is that there is a relatively large company that's been talking to us about how, how they might be able to work with more indigenous mindsets and the creation of their products and the way that they, in the way that they run their business operations and thinking through those, those different things through more of an indigenous mindset more of a community mindset and the places that they're actually based. And I can't share too much about it too much details about it but it's exciting that a company is of that size is interested in working through indigenous frameworks and thinking about how they can engage more with community in an authentic place based way. Wow, that is super exciting. Well, I know you can't talk, you know, specifics about that but when you're talking about the companies that are starting to dive in more into diversity and inclusion and community engagement. Do you have a sense of how, I mean, I think for me, when I hear companies talking about these, these types of things I often wonder how they're going to operationalize these, these concepts because right now they're full ideas is a lot of buzz terms being used and I think companies you know want to look like they're taking a stand about social issues and things like that. But the end of the day being an a an X HR person, I know that the devil's in the details right in terms of how do you operational how do you bring that into the culture of the company. How do you drive that throughout the entire company from CEO all the way down to, you know, the lowest level position. So, do you have a sense of that in terms of, you know, our HR people getting involved for example, or is it still kind of more at the ideation stage and they're still trying to figure out the mechanics of it. Well, I think there's two questions in there there's one that is, you know, what is kind of, I mean, what is maybe my perspective about about what companies should be doing. And there's a second question that's in that is, is, is how are these things actually being operationalized in a local context maybe. So I don't know if I'm going to be able to answer both but I'll take a stab at it. And I want to preface this to that. In addition, or to add on to my last answer. I don't think that companies are doing enough. I think there's still a lot more that needs to be done in order to achieve equity in order to achieve reduction in carbon footprint and regeneration of carbon and of our ecosystems and so we're way behind when we need when there's a lot more to do and so companies need to be more aggressive with those things and taking more of regenerate approach not even just a sustainable approach. But in terms of, you know, operationalizing practices, I mean I think it does come down to people and this is where you and I really agree is that when it comes down to people who is in positions of leadership and I think that more people of color, more people who are more indigenous people in our community need to be in the C suite. They need to be in positions of corporate power and not just corporate power workforce also applies to the public sector. And it applies to nonprofit sector and I know there's a lot more indigenous people in positions of power in the nonprofit sector, but I'd encourage us all, us being in the nonprofit sector as well, to check on our diversity across the board. We should be doing a better job generally every single person including the people that are that are run by diverse individuals. And, and I think that the second thing that I'd add to maybe the operationalization would be that we need to think about how we line up or how economic incentives incentives are lined up with the way that we manage people. Economic incentives shouldn't be necessarily driven toward the creation of more value necessarily or more financial value. Perhaps I think that economic incentives can be placed in the direction of creating more holistic values lined up with things that are more in the corporate social responsibility space that are more in the space of diverse equitable hiring that are more in the space of driving multiple bottom lines of growth. And I'd like to see those things happen too. I think once again this is where the indigenous practices can come in and because this is a systems thinking approach because it's not going to be bandaid you know we have to really think holistically about all the moving parts so there's so much more I want to talk to you about Alec but unfortunately we've got to close. So I want to thank everyone for checking out our show today we've been talking with Alec Wagner from the purple prize. Thank you all for being here and please check back for our next show on Wednesday November 4 at 3pm. I'll be talking to Vanessa Porter from a nonprofit program called Year Up in New York based in New York, and they're an innovative nonprofit also that brings talented young adults from underserved communities and top tech companies together to help them launch their careers. So until then please be safe and be kind to one another and I will see you next time. Aloha and thank you Alec for being here.